You know we can't resist something that a Conservative dismisses as a "socialist propaganda fest". That's the attitude of Angie Bray (leader of London's Tories - one of the ones with the cute little caps aboard the Death Star) at the news that those two red menaces Ken and Chávez have a scheme to flood London with black gold:
an extraordinary deal struck with London's mayor, Ken Livingstone, that would see Caracas benefit from the capital's expertise in policing, tourism, transport, housing and waste disposal. London, meanwhile, would gain the most obvious asset the Venezuelans have to give: cheap oil. Possibly more than a million barrels of the stuff. South American diesel would be supplied by Venezuela - the world's fifth-largest oil exporter - as fuel for some of the capital's 8,000 buses, particularly those services most utilised by the poor.
Ms Bray thinks this is a bad idea:
"Ken and the president of Venezuela should be ashamed of themselves for even contemplating such a proposal. I'm sure the Venezuelans who struggle below the poverty line, many of them critically so, would be shocked at the cynical siphoning off of their main asset to provide one of the world's most prosperous cities with cheap oil."
Well it does go against the more traditional route of funding a coup d'état and then stealing everything legitimately with the help of a puppet government. But even the Lib Dems have problems with Ken's approach:
"This reduces us to the status of a third-world barter economy. We should be weaning ourselves off fossil fuels, not trying to get them at subsidised prices from Venezuela."
The initial plan was to use the oil to benefit directly "young people, schools in working-class areas and the homes of elderly people", but this proved too complicated so they went with the the cheap buses idea instead.
Ken has responded to his critics by turning the inside of his testicle into a Thunderdome.
